Part 37 (1/2)

”Well, all I want to know is, what's it come to?” Lydia Vesey said.

”Course it's just the same as money. I've had checks myself, days past.

Once I done over Miss Tenny's black mohair an' sent it after her, an'

she mailed me back a check,--same day, I guess it was. How much's it come to, Marthy?”

”See for yourself,” said Martha. She laid it, still face upward, on the table. ”It's as much yours as 'tis mine, I guess, if I be treasurer.

Forty-three dollars an' twenty-seven cents.”

There was a chorused sigh.

”Well, I call that a good haul,” said Ann Bartlett, whose father had been s.e.xton for thirty-eight years, and who, in consequence, looked upon herself as holding some subtly intimate relation with the church, so that when the old carpet was ”auctioned off” she insisted on darning the breadths before they were put up for sale. ”What money can do! Just one evenin', an' them few folks dressed up to kill an' payin' that in for their ice-cream an' tickets at the door.”

”We made the ice-cream,” said Martha, as one stating a fact to be justly remembered.

”We paid ourselves in, too,” said Lydia sharply. ”I guess our money's good as anybody's, an' I guess it'll count up as quick an' go as fur.”

”Course it will,” said Martha, in a mollifying tone. ”But 'tis an easy way of makin' a dollar, just as Ann says. There they got up a fancy-dress party an' enjoyed themselves, an' it's brought in all this.

'Twa'n't hard work for 'em. 'Twas a kind o' play.”

”Well, I guess they did enjoy it,” said Mrs. Pray gloomily. She had settled her gla.s.ses on her nose again, and now, with her finger, went following the bows round under her hair, to be sure they ”canted right.”

”I guess they wouldn't ha' done it if they hadn't.”

”There's one thing Mis' Hilton says to me when she pa.s.sed me the check,”

Martha brought out, in sudden recollection. ”'Now here's this money we made for you,' she says. 'Use it anyways you want, so 's you use it for the church. But,' she says, 'why don't you make up your minds now you'll give some kind of an entertainment after we're gone, a harvest festival,' she says, 'or the like o' that? Then you could do your paintin',' she says, 'an' get you a new melodeon for the Sunday School, or whatever 'tis you want. We've showed you the way,' she says. 'Now you go ahead an' see what you can do.'”

Lydia Vesey looked as if she might, in another instant, cap the suggestion by a satirical climax, and Ellen Bayliss rested her sewing hand on her knee and glanced thoughtfully about as if to ask, in her still, earnest way, what her own part could be in such an enterprise.

But a step came hurrying down the stairs, the step of a heavy body lightly carried, and Caddie Musgrave came in at a flying pace. It was Caddie who, with the help of her silent husband, kept the big boarding-house on the hill. No need to talk to her about summer boarders, she was wont to say. She knew 'em, egg an' bird. Take 'em as folks an' n.o.body was better, but 'twas boarders she meant. They might seem different, fust sight, but shake 'em up in a peck measure, an' you couldn't tell t'other from which.

”I guess you're tired,” said Ellen Bayliss, in her gentle fas.h.i.+on, taking a stolen glance from the embroidery and returning again at once to her careful st.i.tches.

”Tired!” said Caddie. She dropped into a chair and leaned her head back with ostentatious weariness. ”I guess I be. An' yet I told Charlie 'fore they went I never'd say I was tired again in all my born days, only let me get rid of 'em this time.”

”How'd you manage with 'em this season?” asked Mrs. Pray, as if her question concerned the importation of some alien plant.

Caddie opened her eyes and came to a posture more adapted to sustaining her end of the conversational burden.

”Why, they're all right,” she owned, ”good as gold, take 'em on their own ground. I found out they were good as gold that winter I went up an'

pa.s.sed Sunday with Mis' Denny. But take 'em together, boardin', an' what one don't think of t'other will. This summer 'twas growin' fleshy, an'

if they didn't harp on that one string--well, suz!”

Mrs. Pray nodded her head solemnly.

”I said that,” she returned. ”I said that to Jonathan when I come home from the Circle the day they was here talkin' over the fund an' settlin'

what they'd do. I come home an' says to Jonathan wipin' his hands on the roller-towel there by the back door, I says, 'What's everybody got ag'inst growin' old, an' growin' hefty, too, for that matter?' I says.

'Seems if folks don't talk about nothin' else.'”

Martha put in her a.s.suaging word.

”Well, I guess human natur' ain't changed much. I guess n.o.body ever hankered after gettin' stiff j'ints an' losin' their eyesight an' so.